> So, I'm reading the news and I see that the state of California is having some pretty major electricity shortage problems. They're talking about controlled, rolling blackouts to conserve power; companies being told they have to cut their power usage; people working in the dark...sounds like a rather messy situation.

It's really nothing extremely new. We went through "Stage Two power alerts" all summer because, naturally, people run the air conditioning when it's a billion degrees outside. I work for the county, and this summer we were asked several times to turn off any lights we could do without. We complied by turning off about half of our lights, and we actually liked it better that way.

We have yet to see rolling blackouts, although an Associated Press article in the Sacramento Bee (see link below) says there is a chance we will get rolling blackouts this afternoon. It's 2:20 p.m. here and they apparently still have enough energy to power Ellmyruh's computer. If the power alerts do go to "Stage Three," that means we have less than 1.5 percent of our energy reserves free. In that case, we might experience those rolling blackouts they keep talking about. (They talked about them all summer and nothing actually happened.)

According to the article, "The lingering energy shortage has been attributed to power plants shipping electricity to Oregon and Washington, plants that have been taken off-line for repairs, and cold weather." I really don't know much more than the article says.

A similar problem is that one of Los Angeles' big power plants had to go offline because it was facing multi-million dollar fines for air pollution. Things like that then have an effect on the rest of the state.

> I live in the midwest where power is plenteous. I've heard of stuff like this happening in second and third world countries, but never in America. Maybe I just haven't been paying attention. I have read stuff before on how the west coast isn't connected to the "national power grid" (whatever that entails) due to the Rockies.

I don't know much about this power grid, but I do know that buying power from other places is extremely expensive right now. As with all hot items (no pun intended), the sellers raise the prices of the items as the demand increases.

> There's lots of regulars here from California. Perhaps some of you could enlighten this poor, underinformed egg-no-ray-moose from back east.
>
> Gri"would you like some positrons with that, sir?"shny

The interesting thing is that, here in California's state capital of Sacramento, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (simply called "SMUD" by everyone around here) is one of the main power suppliers. They're the ones asking people not to turn on their holiday lights until 7 p.m., and then only for a short period of time. At the tree-lighting at the capitol the other day, the governor lit the tree, and then the lights were turned off half an hour later. However, every year SMUD puts on a huge drive-through holiday light display at the county fairgrounds. I find that extremely ironic.

Personally, I will turn on my lights when I darn well please. Holiday lights use a lot less wattage than most household appliances, so I think a student who is stressed out over final papers and exams has the right to turn on her holiday lights if, and when, she wants to.

Ell"On second thought, if they shut off our power, I won't be able to finish my papers by tomorrow morning and my teachers would be forced to move the deadlines back."myruh